


Hollowed-By-Love

by fresne



Category: Midsummer Night's Dream - Shakespeare
Genre: Cat2, F/M, Literature, M/M, Shakespeare, Yuletide 2013, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 13:49:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresne/pseuds/fresne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Puck knew full well that King Oberon, inconstant as the seasons, in that he changed constantly, would accept nothing less than everything. Puck gave that and more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hollowed-By-Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lexigent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexigent/gifts).



> My thinking on Oberon here is affected by a 2009 production in Ashland, which 70 disco aside, had Oberon as all earth and Forest King.

Ill met and by moonlight, proud King and Queen.

Puck watched them daint about among their cowslip courtiers with their dewdrop pearls and golden coats. The Indian youth trailed after them in spinning wonder. The Queen was looking radiant and every inch a Queen. She looked well loved. How not when she'd this or that juice of love sprinkled in her eyes to make her moon over an ass. How not when King Oberon had returned to her bower of a bed. His body gleaming with ebon skin and stygian curls about his legs. His eyes alight with golden delight.

Puck gnawed at the bone while sitting at the feast. He'd had it long ago from King Oberon, who'd tossed it aside. The meat was long since gone. The marrow, oh, the marrow the good King had long since sucked that out as well.

He offered Mustardseed a sharp toothed smile. She brushed at the curls on his legs in sympathy. She said, "He'll tire of the youth soon enough and summon you back to his service. He always summons you back." She did not speak of the Queen. She could not. There was no comfort there that she could give.

Puck gestured with the bone, a thick thigh that had been juicy enough once. "It is our nature to be fickle, inconstant, twinkling as a star, turning on the phases of the moon with great tides that push and pull and crash and give way and become something else." The bone cracked. Puck let it fall beneath the fetid toadstool upon he was lounging. "I'm off for mischief."

"Goodbye, merry wanderer of the night," whispered Mustardseed. They'd coupled once an age or so ago in a rose's resplendent folds. Puck had thought to make King Oberon jealous and earned a cuff about the ears. Sometimes, he let his head still ring with it. That and the lesson King Oberon gave him after.

Puck wandered.

As a golden light, he mislead a traveller crossing the wide moors away from the path until the fool cried out for mercy, as if Puck had any of that, but then the fool thought to turn his clothes inside out. Puck snarled and went to find other mischief.

As a thief, he replaced all the fruit in a pie with smooth river rocks. The fruit he ate with smacking lips as if he were hungry.

He was not hungry. Not for fruit.

As a gadfly, he crept into the dreams of a girl in her attic room and wailed in her ear as a baby might do. In that dream, she flinched thinking him the result of giving way to her lover's pathetic poem upon fleas and fleeting flowers.

His lips curled at her sleeping tears and joy when she suddenly woke to find herself able to play the seeming virgin still.

As a gardener, he pruned all the trees in a certain forest of a certain king into the shapes of great dragons and watched silently as these trees were discovered by the Queen and her lover. Oh, how they chattered and made plans based on the portents of those trees.

He watched with hot eyes at all that should have amused him.

He returned to the feast. They were still at it, of course. They lounged in Queen Titania's bower where she had but lately entertained a man with the head of an ass. The wild thyme still blew. The oxlips and nodding violets still trembled. The place was still over-cannopied with luscious woodbine and the whole place was so rich with musk-roses and eglantine that it was hard to breathe.

Queen Titania was determinedly braiding clever flowers through King Oberon's branching crown of horn. The Indian youth was at Oberon's feet in Puck's place with his hand upon the great king's thigh. That place that very spot with his hand and his manner belonged to Puck. Or else the Queen's location, with the King's head in her lap as she tended to him and smiled over his head at Puck. Better yet that.

King Oberon chanced to look up and see Puck. He beckoned him closer and foolish Puck, hungry, longing Puck, he came at his master's bidding. King Oberon smiled and said, "I see that my Puck has been at mischief. Entertain us with your telling of it."

Puck smiled and puffed up his chest. He was made for this. For this moment when the king, his king's attention shone in golden lit eyes upon him. He cavorted. He enacted. He bent over backwards until Queen Titania laughed, despite her current spite with him, and the Indian youth, who must surely have a name if Puck had not burnt the thing in a pyre, clapped his hands. Puck did not care. He cared only for the king, his king's smile. His rich laugh that like the sweetest of honey poured over the night and made all golden. He cared only for King Oberon's beckon forward when Puck was done with his recitation. At which Puck could not do aught but creep forward until he was within King Oberon's reach. The King, his King lightly caressed the curls at Puck's thighs and Puck shivered, leaning into the touch. For King Oberon knew what he was at.

King Oberon waved at the Indian youth, "Take this young gentleman and teach him to please me." He looked up at Queen Titania, but she was watching Puck. "I wish to tryst with my Queen for an age or two."

The Queen, who Puck had tricked into love, but some short time before, laughed like ice crackling on a leaf and said, "Yes, Robin Goodfellow, teach our servant to please us, while we please ourselves." She bent to kiss her King and he her.

Robin took the King's new toy in hand, as he gazed back longingly at the King and Queen at their tryst. That stripling of a youth finally turned back to Puck and said, "My name is Chaita…" but Puck stopped his mouth with a finger. 

He said, "Never give your name to a fairy and certainly not one in my mood. You are Hollowed-by-Love."

Hollowed-by-Love said very slowly, "I think that might be your name also."

Puck grinned. "We are both Hollowed-by-Love and it very confusing." He licked his lips. "No, for tonight, you are King Oberon and I am your loyal servant, and I will show you how to please the King."

"And the Queen?" asked Hollowed-by-Love.

"Oh, I think you already have some practice at that art," said Puck. He set the stripling up on a burnt out throne of a tree and demonstrated how to go about the pleasing of a king.

When he was done, Hollowed-by-Love said, "I think you must love him very much."

Puck grinned and said, "One more warning I'll give you. Absolute love and devotion is the only thing that my King will accept. Be hollowed out or be cracked like a bone when you fail to give him all."

"Oh," said Hollowed-by-Love sounding as hollow as a drum.

"Yes, my sweet young King. Oh." Then Puck kissed the youth's eyes so that he slept and dreamed of empires, and on waking would find himself in the garden of a murdered king full of dragons where he might be a hero for that king's weeping son.

Let King Oberon and Queen Titania rage over their loss, and on raging know it to be their own fault for entrusting such a treasure to such a keeper. 

Puck recovered his splintered bone and gnawed upon it a little while longer before seeking dreams himself that spun on the rapids of his King's sighs with his Queen in the eternal fairy night.

**Author's Note:**

> If after reading my fiction here, you would like to read more about me and my writing check out my profile.


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